http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/12/pressure-us-action-iran-revolutionary-guards-irgc.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=529c1cb6f2-December_03_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-529c1cb6f2-93093693 Is US preparing to crack down on IRGC?
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., (C) participates in a committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington, Nov. 4, 2015. (photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) A key panel of Congress is getting closer to slapping new sanctions on Iran's revolutionary guards despite warnings that doing so could undermine the nuclear deal with Tehran. Summary⎙ Print A key House panel is inching closer to slapping additional sanctions on the IRGC. Individual lawmakers over the past few months have introduced several bills encouraging the Obama administration to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, with little traction so far. But now the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the issue, has begun to coalesce behind the scenes around a similar effort. "The issue is what's the best way to get at those individuals, those entities that are essentially IRGC-controlled but look for ways to suggest that they're not," said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the top Democrat on the committee's Middle East panel. "There are a lot of us who would like to move in that direction ... especially before there is sanctions relief granted under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]." A committee aide confirmed that staff-level discussions are ongoing but there’s not yet draft legislation. Deutch spoke to Al-Monitor following a Dec. 2 full committee hearing looking at how the IRGC is "fueling conflict in the Middle East." During the hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., received the blessing of Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., to distribute his own "discussion draft of a statute aimed at the IRGC" to all members of the committee. "We now have a menu of sanctions that can be imposed against a bank or a company that does business with the IRGC," Sherman told the committee. "It shouldn't be a menu ... but rather an absolute ban on doing business with the United States that then could be lifted with specific licenses, so that a company that does any significant business with the IRGC would lose all access to the US market." Royce himself has urged the administration to keep the pressure on the revolutionary guards, as has the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. US sanctions on the IRGC for human rights abuses — and the terrorist designation of its military arm, the Quds Force — will remain in place, but many lawmakers want to further crack down on the group's many tentacles in Iranian business. "We'll take our cues from Chairman Royce and ranking member Engel, but everybody's fired up that we need to do more and that certainly looks like the direction we're headed," Middle East panel Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., told Al-Monitor. "It seems to me like everybody's on the same page, sympatico, we understand the threat, let's do it. We're not going to get any leadership from the White House to do it, so we're going to have to act." President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the Treasury Department's counterterrorism and financial intelligence efforts, Adam Szubin, has testified <http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4552805/corker-szubin-discuss-irgcfto-designation>, however, that the human rights sanctions on the IRGC and its subsidiaries <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/irgc-sedition-nuclear-deal-america.html> are "just as sweeping" as the terrorism designation Congress is contemplating. Royce declined to comment about his plans and Engel's office did not respond to a request for comment. "We have yet to see any effective strategy from the administration to push back against the IRGC's regional advances, which have emboldened Iran and undermined our allies," Royce said in his opening statement. "This morning we'll hear from our witnesses on what such a strategy might look like, and how Congress can help." Engel, for his part, said lawmakers "need to send a clear message that working with Iranian firms linked to the IRGC is risky business." The issue is heating up as the US prepares to lift so-called secondary sanctions early next year that impact foreign firms and governments — notably in Europe — that are seeking to do business with Iran. While US sanctions on Iran will remain largely in place, critics of the nuclear deal worry that Europe's sanctions against the IRGC are set to expire <http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/09/us-iran-nuclear-sanctions-idUSKCN0QE08320150809#xpS2uBSYIYLTcGhI.97> while its existing sanctions apparatus isn't comprehensive enough to capture all aspects of the IRGC's numerous operations. Republican presidential contender and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz <https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2094?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22irgc%22%5D%7D&resultIndex=4> has introduced legislation urging the State Department to designate the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), as has House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul <https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3646?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22irgc%22%5D%7D&resultIndex=3>, R-Texas. And Rep. Ted Poe <https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3693?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22irgc%22%5D%7D&resultIndex=1>, R-Texas, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has offered a separate bill requesting the Treasury Department to report on whether the IRGC fits the bill for a terrorism designation. “Designating the IRGC as an FTO will provide another warning for foreign companies considering doing business in Iran," Emanuele Ottolenghi <http://www.defenddemocracy.org/testimony/iran-deal-and-its-impact-on-irans-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps> of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified before Ros-Lehtinen's panel in September. He went on to urge Congress to leverage trade talks with Europe to demand a tougher stance on the IRGC. “Congress should require the trans-Atlantic trade and investment partnership between the US and the EU to stipulate that any European company contracting with Iran must certify that none of the indigenous partners are associated in part or in whole with the IRGC, requiring also that the EU report annually on European investing in Iran, placing it under public scrutiny," Ottolenghi said. "At a minimum, Congress should encourage international corporations to demand an exclusion clause to halt commercial activities with all suspected or designated IRGC.” Two of the witnesses at the Dec. 2 hearing agreed that further sanctions on the IRGC are warranted. Scott Modell, a former CIA officer who now heads the Rapidan Group, said Iran's "main goal has always been to get rid of European sanction." "If you did do that," Modell said, "you would have an extra deterrent for Europeans to do business with [the Iranians] and that might be an extra way of prying them to change their behavior." And Ali Alfoneh, also of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recommended targeting IRGC ground forces fighting in Syria <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/irgc-deaths-syria.html>. "I would like to punish those entities of the Revolutionary Guard which take part in the war in Syria and we can document their presence in Syria," Alfoneh testified. "Hopefully [this will help the IRGC] understand the price that they are paying for supporting Bashar [al-]Assad's regime." The State Department's former counterterrorism chief, Daniel Benjamin, broke with the other two. "Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism, and as such it is covered by a wide swath of different sanctions that are extremely comprehensive," Benjamin said. "We have all the instruments we need and I think to do something additional like this would both be unnecessary from a functional standpoint, and from a signaling standpoint I'm not sure that it is precisely what we need at precisely the moment that we want to see an effective implementation <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/09/rouhani-irgc-nuclear-deal.html> of the JCPOA." __._,_.___ ------------------------------ Posted by: "Beowulf" <[email protected]> ------------------------------ Visit Your Group <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/grendelreport/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmbGhyZTJkBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0NDkxNzcyMTk-> [image: Yahoo! 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